Averroes Quotes on God
Averroes (Ibn Rushd, 1126–1198) wrote the most rigorous Arabic commentaries on Aristotle in the medieval period and defended Aristotelian philosophy against al-Ghazali's Incoherence of the Philosophers in his own Incoherence of the Incoherence (Tahafut al-Tahafut). The Decisive Treatise on the Harmony of Religion and Philosophy argues that the philosophical demonstration available to the qualified philosopher and the rhetorical and dialectical instruction available to the ordinary believer are different paths to the same truth, mandated by the Quran itself for those capable of each. The Latin reception of Averroes — through the translations made at Toledo and Naples in the thirteenth century — shaped the Christian scholastic engagement with Aristotle and provoked the condemnations of 1270 and 1277 against the so-called Latin Averroists at Paris.
Quotes
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Attributed to Averroes:
“If reason and revelation appear to disagree, it is the surface meaning of the revealed text that must be reinterpreted.”
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Attributed to Averroes:
“Philosophy is the friend and milk-sister of religion.”
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“The necessary connexion of movement and time is real and time is something the soul (dhihn) constructs in movement.”
As cited in "Being and Language in Averroes' “Tahafut At-Tahafut” (2003) by Massimo Campanini -
“Philosophers do not claim that God does not know particulars ; they rather claim that He does not know them the way humans do. God knows particulars as their Creator whereas humans know them as a privileged creations of God might know them.”
Attributed to Averroes in Voices of Islam: Voices of change (2007) by Vincent J. Cornell, p. 35 -
“The Law teaches that the universe was invented and created by God , and that it did not come into being by chance or by itself.”
Part 1: The Creation of the Universe; Opening sentence -
“Come the Day of Judgment , some believe that the body will be different from our present body. This is only transient, that will be eternal . For this also there are religious arguments.”
On the Harmony of Religions and Philosophy | Pat 5: The Day of Judgment; Opening sentence -
“The Asharites have expressed a very peculiar opinion, both with regard to reason and religion; about this problem they have explained it in a way in which religion has not, but have adopted quite an opposite method.”
On the Harmony of Religions and Philosophy | Part 4: Divine Justice and Injustice; Opening sentence